Ngezi Platinum Stars FC v. Bongani Mafu & FIFA

Zimbabwean club Ngezi Platinum Stars dismissed assistant coach Bongani Mafu, a dual British and Zimbabwean national, in 2022. FIFA's Players' Status Chamber ruled in his favour on 27 August 2024, ordering the club to pay US$196,750 in compensation for breach of contract without just cause; the decision was uploaded to the FIFA Legal Portal and communicated to the club by automated email on 30 August 2024, starting a 10-day clock, due to expire 9 September 2024, for Ngezi to formally request the PSC's written grounds before it could appeal.

Ngezi did request the grounds — but did so both after the deadline and by an invalid method, emailing the request directly rather than using the Legal Portal that Article 10 of FIFA's Procedural Rules requires exclusively since 1 May 2023. The central question for the Sole Arbitrator, Kwadjo Adjepong, was whether the original 30 August notification had itself been validly made, since that determined whether the 10-day clock had properly started at all. Applying a principle of Swiss law confirmed in CAS's own jurisprudence, the Arbitrator held that a communication is validly notified once it enters the recipient's own "sphere of control" — here, the moment the decision was uploaded to the club's Legal Portal account and the automated notification email sent. On that basis, Ngezi's grounds request was both late and made through an invalid channel, and the club was found to have waived its right of appeal entirely, without CAS needing to examine the merits of the dismissal at all.

Decided 13 October 2025, the case is one of two nearly-identical procedural losses for Zimbabwean clubs connected to the same window of FIFA rulings, alongside the Tanzania FA/Amrouche matter above. The PSC's US$196,750 award became final and binding, with costs falling on Ngezi. When the club still failed to pay by the 6 November 2025 deadline, FIFA was asked to enforce a transfer ban for non-compliance; that sanction was only lifted once the club and Mafu reached an out-of-court settlement. The case forms part of a wider financial crisis at Ngezi: the club separately owes former head coach Benjani Mwaruwari a further US$570,000 under a related CAS-upheld award, taking its combined liabilities to its two dismissed coaches alone to nearly US$800,000.